...In the 1900s, the food and labor industry were far from perfect. Food was produced in plants that were ridden with diseases and vermin, while workers were exposed to unsafe labor conditions and horrible treatment. To uncover these issues, Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, a novel about the meatpacking industry of Chicago in the early 1900s. His upbringing and what was happening in the country during his life heavily weighed in on his reason to write the novel. Because of his socialist views and realistic writing, Upton Sinclair was able to revolutionize the food industry of his time with his novel, The Jungle. Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1878. As an only child, he grew up in poverty but also experience the privileges...
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...The meatpacking industry has changed over the years, for good, and then back to bad. Prior to the 1920s, meatpacking plants were one of the worst places to work and served gruesome meat. Once Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, people started to take notice of the horrible conditions that the meatpacking industry had. President Roosevelt even sent out a representative to see if the conditions were really that bad, and he reported back that some of the conditions were even worse than Sinclair had described. Sinclair had written in The Jungle a list of practices that would be used in the plant: “The routine slaughter of diseased animals, the use of chemicals such as borax and glycerine to disguise the smell of spoiled beef, the deliberate mislabeling of canned meat, the tendency of workers to urinate and defecate on the kill floor” (Schlosser 204). Recalling meat back then was never a thought in these companies’ minds. Whatever way made the most money was the practice they...
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...as well as eliminating the risk of unwholesome products in their everyday lives. For example, in the novel The Jungle, Upton Sinclair exposes the unwholesome and unsanitary practices of the meatpacking industry during the early 1900s. Furthemore, Sinclair was a 'muckraker' or journalist who exposed the immoral practices of the meatpacking industry in order to push for mandatory meat inspection; however, President Roosevelt viewed the novel as an exaggeration of the truth of the matter and personally inspected the industry's practices themselves. Thereafter, Roosevelt discovered...
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...Impacts of The Jungle on American Society As Judith Lewis Herman exhorted in her novel, Trauma and Recovery, "The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness” (“Trauma and Recovery Quotes”). However, a nationwide nerve was struck when the grotesque meat- packing industry was revealed by Upton Sinclair. He blazoned to Americans across the country the lurid details of the industry though his novel, The Jungle, a novel which changed American history. [This scathing review on the meat packing industry with socialist undertones brought an advent of great social and legal change to the United States.] With its stunning entrance into American literature in 1906, The Jungle created an uproar that has endured over a century since its publication. Upton Sinclair was an ardent proponent of socialism in America and yearned to reform the ailing country (Fogel). His novel was produced as a metaphor, comparing a jungle directly to the corrupt meat packing industry based in Chicago. Sinclair sought to expose the unknown atrocities hidden in the meat packing industry, which was not forced to obey any form of regulation (Shafer). Sinclair wrote that, “It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory” (Sinclair 56). This fictional piece of literature brought America to a screeching halt. Never before had such a bold statement been made about an industry that affected almost every single American. Upton’s...
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...then on getting rid of corruption in government. (Constitutional Rights Foundation) Journalists of this time took advantage of the opportunity to show the American people how corrupt many of the health systems were. In 1902, magazine publishers discovered that their sales increased dramatically when they highlighted popular stories of political corruption, corporate misconduct, or other offenses. (Gilder Lehrman Institute) The novelist Upton Sinclair also played a large role during this new era in the fight...
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...American industrialist. After immigrating to the United States in 1835, he amassed a fortune in the steel industry making him one of the world’s richest men. His rags-to-riches story epitomizes the immigrant success story. While Carnegie was a firm believer in the importance of philanthropy and the potential of the laboring class, the rise of business and industry created a widening gap between the rich in the poor by the late nineteenth century. This discrepancy of wealth and unjust activity within business and political enterprises became commonly discussed in writings of the day. Over the course of seven weeks in 1904, journalist Upton Sinclair entered Chicago’s meatpacking industry and...
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...Whenever you hear "The Jungle" most think of a tropical forest full of thick, brightly colored plants and trees containing various types of animals. However, the book The Jungle is a novel written by the American journalist and muckraker Upton Sinclair. Sinclair wrote the novel to expose the harsh conditions and exploited lives of immigrants in the meatpacking industry of Chicago. So how do the two relate? The novel's title symbolizes the competitive nature of capitalism. The life of living in Packingtown is like living in a jungle, in which the strong prey on the weak and all living things are engaged in a violent, brutal fight for survival. In the book, you only see the use of the word "jungle" once. This being when Jurgis has been drinking and decides to sleep with a prostitute. The novel also seems to compare Jurgis' sexual desire to that of a beast in the jungle. Therefore associating jungles with uncontrolled desires. This being said, the awful conditions of the workers in Packingtown are the result of the uncontrollable human desire for money. The Jungle is about bringing to light human greed and the social damage it does. The images of "beasts" that live in the jungle also depicts violence and brutality – another huge theme of Sinclair's analysis of life in Packingtown. Sinclair describes capitalism as destructive because he shows it...
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...The Horrors of Packingtown Living and Dying in Packingtown, Chicago is an expert from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, which told the story of Jurgis Rudkus, a Lithuanian immigrant trying to survive in Chicago. Sinclair wrote The Jungle with hopes to achieve better working conditions all around the United States, but also to show the corruption and evil that come with capitalism. His book was an instant best seller and caused massive reform of the meatpacking industry, however, this reform was focused on health concerns rather than concerns for the workers. “‘I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach,’ he said.” (BLACKWELL) Living and Dying in Packingtown, Chicago opens into the struggles of life at home for immigrant family with the painful death of their child, Kristoforas, who had eaten some tubercular beef which was unfit for export. The family could not afford a grave so the mother, Elzbieta, went in tears to beg from their local neighbors for a proper burial. This opening brings the reader instantly into the situation this family is in and what dire state of poverty they faced. Jurgis, having no job and a family to feed, went to the dreaded fertilizer plants which were talked about mostly in feared rumor. “Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking like Dante, of whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell.” (p. 74) Only the desperate resort to working at the fertilizer plants which was where all the “tankage”...
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...view on industries and opened the eyes of President Roosevelt and the government. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906 and it was a catalyst for the reform of the country's food safety laws and standards. Sinclair was placed under muckraker through this novel because he displayed the corrupt sides of businesses to the public. The book portrayed the conditions of the meatpacking industry in Chicago through the eyes of Jurgis, an immigrant. Sinclair, through Jurgis, noted the shocking and disgusting conditions and methods utilized in the industry. Animals were slaughtered in a frightening and cruel way while workers transferred diseases and germs to those animals. Employees were ill and...
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...The show has gotten excellent reviews, collecting many Emmy nominations and a Peabody award. And it’s brought to light many problems of today’s women in prisons: unfair use of solitary confinement, racial bias, homophobia, the blatant sexism between male guards and the female prisoners, etc (Kohan). While the show may be fictional in some aspects of the characters and situation, the conditions are real, and the book is true. Like muckraker Upton Sinclair, Piper Kerman wrote her memoir to pull back the disgusting curtain on the condition of women prisoners, and it’s worked (Kerman). Orange is the New Black is an excellent example of an unconventional source of muckraking. It brings to light issues of the reality, while capturing the attention of audiences with its exceptional acting and...
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...Paragraph 1: His background. Upton Sinclair was born in Baltimore, Maryland in September of 1878. He died in November of 1968 at the age of 90 in New Jersey. He was married three different times over his long life. According to his Wikipedia page his family did not have much money however his grandparents was quite wealthy, this gave him the advantage of seeing how wealthy and poor people lived. Seeing the 19th century from that point of view definitely had an impact on his writings. He loved reading as a child and read as many books of his mother’s that he could. When he was 14 he began attending the City College of New York and began writing magazine articles and jokes to help pay for the tuition. This is where he began his writing career....
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...In the 1900s , meat industry workers worked in awful conditions . A muckraker named Upton Sinclair exposed the meat industry in his book “ The Jungle “ . A muckraker is someone who seeks out the secrets of business or scandel and exposes them for the public to see . Sinclair himself was a writer . The meat produced in the plants was extremely unsanitary . When they first read it , the public was absolutely horrified . In the slaughterhouses , there would be meat that had tumbled onto the floor , in dirt and sawdust , and had billions of germs on it . When it rained , water would fall onto it through cracks in the ceiling . Rats would often gather round the meat , and the meat itself was often covered in rat waste . Dead rats would be thrown...
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...Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation expose working conditions and animal slaughter in the food industry. Even though these texts were published years apart, they both share similar details and goals. Sinclair is a muckraker who exposed political and social problems during the Progressive Era, and Eric Schlosser is a journalist. Both of these excerpts express the problems that workers faced, mostly immigrants, and the gruesome details of animal slaughter in the food industry. Both publications share similarities and differences in their goals, details to prove their points, and effects of their publication when dealing with the hidden aspects of the food industry. Both excerpts’ goals are to produce outrage...
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...will be discussing about the meat packing industry during the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th to 29th century. I would like to expand on the environmental consequences of the meat packing industry, the cruel treatment of the workers, and the epidemic diseases that occurred due to the unsanitary environment of the industries. The meat packing industry was a ground turning point of U.S history, which symbolized meat as a symbol of man’s conquest over nature and the environment. Meatpacking industries were largely concentrated in large cities such as Chicago, New York, Ohio, and Kansas City. The big four companies were known as the Armour, Swift, Morris, and National Packing companies. Live animals would be shipped via railroads and sent directly to the factories in the city, ready to be sliced and prepared. This was during the Industrial Revolution , a time when powerful monopolies and companies took control of U.S.: Standard Oil, U.S. Steel, including meat packing industry. Cincinnati, Ohio originally was the center of the meat processing industry. Environmentally, the industry gained benefits due to the plants located near the Ohio River, allowing easy transport of goods. However, Chicago replaced Cincinnati and demonstrated new unique advantages with the emergence of refrigerated railroad cars, allowing convenient transportation facilities throughout different cities. Despite the fact that the exterior of meat packing industries seemed powerful and rich, the true interior...
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...The Progressive Era lasted from 1890 to 1920, in which many reforms, movements and politicians came into place. It wasn’t always a political movement but began as a social movement to alleviate the ills that people especially those in poverty faced. This included constitutional amendments such as the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th amendment, the Pure Food and Drug Act and countless other reforms. All these reforms led to an improvement in working conditions for workers but ultimately didn’t help everyone. The 16th through the 19th amendment were all passed during the progressive era. The 16th amendment which was ratified on February 3rd, 1913. It gave Congress the right to collect an income tax. The progressives saw this as a victory so that the...
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